CHAPTER 28 #2
Elizabeth had intended to advise, laugh, and leave with nothing but a clearer opinion of Miss Bingley’s methods. She had not come to order anything. She had not the least need of another gown.
Then Jane turned to her with the full force of happiness.
“Lizzy, you must look too.”
“I am looking.”
“You know very well that is not what I mean.”
“Looking is the first stage of surrender.”
“Then surrender very slowly,” said Jane, and squeezed her hand.
Elizabeth found opposition much easier when the opposing party was less happy.
Had Jane lectured, Elizabeth might have laughed.
Had she pitied, Elizabeth might have retreated.
But Jane only smiled, included Pom-Pom, thanked Miss Bingley for tyranny, and looked at Elizabeth as if pleasure were something sisters ought to share.
Madame Elsworthy, encouraged by weakness, produced a soft grey-blue cloth suitable for a day dress, sober enough for Elizabeth’s judgment and gentle enough to flatter it. Elizabeth touched it, only to prove she was not tempted, and found it finer than she had expected.
“It would suit your complexion,” Jane said.
“My complexion has not complained of neglect.”
“No,” said Miss Bingley, considering the cloth, “but it might improve under encouragement.”
“Am I to understand that my complexion has been idle?”
“Not idle,” said Miss Bingley. “Underemployed.”
Elizabeth should not have been amused. She was, unfortunately, very much amused.
The day dress was ordered.
This should have satisfied everyone. It did not satisfy Jane, who looked so hopeful that Elizabeth began to suspect marriage had made her sister unscrupulous.
“There is also this,” said Madame Elsworthy, and drew out a length of silk so deep and warm that the room seemed to alter around it.
It was not red. Red would have been too bright, too bold, too much like a declaration delivered before witnesses. This was claret: dark enough to be sober by candlelight, rich enough to escape mourning entirely.
Elizabeth’s first thought was no.
Her second thought was of the dining room.
Candles. Polished wood. The long table no longer sunk in brown shadow. Mrs. Albright approving the fall of the curtains with only three reservations. Friends seated where silence had lived too long. Laughter crossing the room and returning.
A woman did not order a dinner dress because a dining room had recovered from bad wallpaper.
That was absurd.
“Not red,” said Miss Bingley at once.
“I had not accused it of being red,” Elizabeth replied.
Miss Bingley considered the silk again, her expression reluctantly exact. “Claret may be permitted, if no one is foolish enough to trim it like a theatre curtain.”
Jane’s eyes softened. “Oh, Lizzy.”
“It is merely silk.”
“No,” said Jane, smiling. “It is not merely silk.”
Elizabeth looked down at Lord Pomington, who had placed one paw upon the edge of the fabric as if claiming feudal rights over it.
“His lordship has made an administrative decision,” said Mrs. Doddridge.
Elizabeth lifted the dog’s paw. “His lordship is easily bribed by texture.”
But the dress was ordered.
The gown belonged to the house, Elizabeth told herself. That was all. A mistress of Portman Square might require a dinner dress. It need not confess anything more.
Madame Elsworthy wrote down the particulars. Miss Bingley corrected one trimming. Jane looked unbearably pleased.
Elizabeth began to feel that she had been outnumbered by affection, taste, and upholstery.
The shoemaker’s was quieter, darker, and smelled of leather, polish, and damp pavements. Here Miss Bingley’s authority met its match in a man who had measured half the fashionable feet in London and had survived stronger weather than female opinion.
Jane was measured for walking boots, half-boots, and evening slippers. She protested at the number.
“Charles insisted I must have comfortable shoes for every occasion,” she said.
“Mr. Bingley has a touching belief,” said Elizabeth, “that comfort can be multiplied indefinitely by purchase.”
“He means so kindly.”
“He always does,” said Miss Bingley. “That is why he must be supervised.”
Jane’s expression at this was all fondness and no offence, which Elizabeth found admirable and slightly alarming.
Miss Bingley could prod, prune, and arrange, and Jane somehow received the useful part without being wounded by the sharp.
Perhaps this was another benefit of happiness: it made one less bruisable.
Elizabeth stood aside while Jane’s order was written, intending, once again, to observe without consequence.
Then the shoemaker’s assistant opened a drawer and brought out soft grey leather.
It was a quiet colour, neither fashionable enough to demand admiration nor plain enough to escape notice. It suggested clean pavements after rain, early spring light, and the possibility of walking out for no better reason than wishing to go.
Elizabeth looked away.
This was unsuccessful, because she looked back.
The claret gown belonged to the house. The grey boots, Elizabeth was forced to admit, belonged to herself.
Miss Bingley noticed, of course. It was one of the trials of her company that she saw things accurately when it would have been so much more convenient for her to be foolish.
“Those would do very well for you, Miss Bennet. Practical, without quite submitting to plainness.”
“Then I must respect their moderation.”
Jane smiled. “You should order them.”
“I have no need of boots.”
“No one here has need of half of what has been ordered,” said Miss Bingley. “That is not the question.”
Elizabeth raised her brows. “And what is the question?”
“Whether they are right.”
The grey boots were ordered.
Jane looked happier over that than over her own slippers, which was unreasonable and therefore very Jane.
“I am glad,” she said, as they returned to the carriage.
“Of my boots?”
“Yes,” said Jane, smiling. “Of your boots.”
Elizabeth had the uncomfortable impression that Jane meant more than boots. She chose not to inquire, because a sister’s happiness was one thing, but a sister’s perception was quite another.
By the time the carriage returned to Portman Square, the day had stretched far beyond a simple outing.
Mrs. Doddridge descended with the dignity of a woman who had survived several establishments without once confusing her station.
Lord Pomington, worn out by society, had fallen asleep against her muff.
Jane kissed Elizabeth’s cheek and promised to call again very soon.
Miss Bingley offered a farewell so polished that it almost concealed her interest in the house.
Almost.
Miss Bingley looked at Portman Square with the same attention she had given the claret silk: not admiring exactly, and certainly not surrendering, but revising some private estimate.
Elizabeth could not blame her. She had been doing very much the same thing herself.
Thursday came with rain.
It was not picturesque rain. London seldom took so much trouble.
It produced a steady, grey persistence that blurred the windows, darkened the street, and made Lord Pomington refuse even the suggestion of a constitutional.
By four o’clock, the lamps had been lit early, and the finished dining room held the light with a warmth that still surprised Elizabeth whenever she entered it.
Mr. Darcy arrived with damp upon his coat and restraint upon his face. These were both familiar enough to be almost comforting.
The business of the afternoon was not considerable. A repair account required a correction. Mr. Terling had sent word about a tenant’s complaint. Mrs. Albright had discovered that one chair, though not visibly inferior to the others, had a disposition she did not like.
“A disposition?” Darcy repeated.
Mrs. Albright looked at him. “Yes, sir.”
He accepted this explanation at once. Elizabeth, watching him, was obliged to turn toward the window for fear of smiling too openly.
There was something deeply unfair in a man who could listen gravely while Mrs. Albright prosecuted a chair.
When the papers were done and Mrs. Albright had withdrawn to continue her campaign against the chair in question, Elizabeth led him toward the dining room.
“I must show you the result,” she said. “You have earned the sight, having survived so many samples.”
“I have not suffered.”
“No. You have been heroic in a very subdued manner. It is your most aggravating form of heroism.”
His mouth softened, but he only opened the door for her.
The room was not grand in the manner of houses that wished to announce themselves before anyone had sat down.
It was not new enough to be fashionable, nor old enough to be venerable.
But it had balance now. The clumsy darkness had lifted.
The walls were warm without oppressing. The curtains gave height to the windows.
The table, polished and bare, seemed to wait without reproach.
Elizabeth had thought the room finished when the curtains were hung. She discovered, when Mr. Darcy stood in it and looked pleased, that she had been mistaken.
There were, apparently, degrees of finished; and one of them had waited for a gentleman to approve the very thing he had helped make possible.
“Well?” she said, because silence had become too suggestive.
He looked from the walls to the table, then back toward her. “It is a very handsome room.”
“That is too mild. I expected more triumph. You have seen what it was.”
“I have.”
“And do you not feel some pride in its rescue?”
“I would not presume upon the room’s gratitude.”